From a cold rain, Tara Rech walked under the red and green neon sign of the Verdi Club, through its doors, and into the golden era of Argentine tango. Or at least the closest thing to it in San Francisco — and for hundreds of miles in any direction.
Wearing black sequined pants and a scarlet lace top, Rech sat down in a chair on the perimeter of the dance floor. From a bag slung over her shoulder, she pulled out a pair of very high heels, and buckled their narrow straps around her feet.
“This is a sexy dance, you want to look hot, and you need to be able to pivot,” Rech, a clinical psychologist by day, told me.
Rech had arrived at Milonga Malevaje, as she does almost every Thursday night. Milonga is both a dance and a type of music that evolved into, and is generally faster than, tango. There are other Milongas in San Francisco, but committed tango dancers love Milonga Malevaje for its authenticity and elegance.
Dancers approach Milonga with piety. Most have studied tango for years, even decades; many make pilgrimages to Buenos Aires, its birthplace, to dance and learn. “Followers” close their eyes before a dance, and take a deep breath to relax. The “leader” draws their partner close, often as close as two people can be, as the couples cut and glide counterclockwise around the floor. Heels flick, landing briefly between or around their partner’s legs. Some dances look rehearsed, but they aren’t.
“We lead and follow every step, it’s not a set pattern,” said Kent Burns, who made the trip from San Mateo. (He had changed into brown leather shoes laced tight, with a patch of suede attached to the ball of the sole, and rubber heels). “We customize the dance to the music.”
The connection between dancers is in the upper body — a hug, Burns said. “The intimacy is in the embrace, but even if you’re not holding someone tight, there is still intimacy because you feel them moving with you, and to the music,” he explained.
Part of Milonga Malevaje’s magic is its venue. The Verdi Club opened in 1935, coinciding with the dawn of tango’s golden era. Its architecture and decor, befitting its history as an Italian social club, infuses the scene with a panache that wouldn’t feel too out of place in Buenos Aires.
Dancers are drawn to the floor by the ritual of “cabaceo,” in which a mutual interest must be established through eye contact and, often, a nod of agreement. Pairings last for a “tanda,” a set of three to four songs.
“It’s like a 10-minute romance, and then you part ways,” Rech said. “So it’s nice. It’s not necessarily sexual, but it is intimate. And because you feel each other’s body, and you’re responding, some of the dances are super exciting and passionate. But you have to really pay attention to each other very closely in order to do it well.”
The doyenne of Milonga Malevaje is Christy Coté, a longtime tango performer and instructor, who co-founded the Verdi Club Milonga thirty years ago. Through various iterations, and pauses, the program evolved into Milonga Malevaje, now run by Adolfo Caszarry and Ramada Salieri.
Besides being a type of music and dance, Milonga is also a social dance party, Coté explained. Malevaje, she adds, is a word from lunfardo, a mainstream slang that originated in Buenos Aires and is commonly used in tango lyrics, meaning, roughly, hoodlum or gangster.
Milonga is “more like a religion than a dance,” Coté said, and driven by its particular blend of popular and classical music. “It’s a feeling that is danced — the human touch, the close embrace, all of these things factor into it. It’s very addictive.”
Followers are instructed to close their eyes, to “go inside,” because they don’t need to see anything, she said. They are encouraged to become mesmerized by the music, and once they hear it in a certain way, achieve an almost hypnotic state in which they feel the movement and how it relates to the dance, Coté said. Some people can’t learn it. “They don’t find the feeling of the tango, which is unfortunate, but not everybody finds it,” she said.
An orchestra sometimes plays at Milonga Malevaje, but last Thursday software engineer and 15-year tango student Gokhan Oner was spinning the music. Each of Oner’s tandas are curated by the hour and mood. As we spoke at the start, he was playing a song by the Alfredo De Angelis orchestra.
He begins with an “introduction” by playing simpler songs as the dance floor fills out. In the second and third hours, faster paced Milonga takes hold, though they can be happier or more melancholic depending on the mood he detects. The fourth hour, ending at midnight, is devoted to melodic songs, so dancers can “just hug, dance softly, and then hopefully go home relaxed and enjoy the night,” he said.
Kim Mossman came to Milonga Malevaje married, and not interested in the music or dance, but as a wingwoman for divorced friends. She has seen her share of people come to the dance out of personal crises, because it’s all about “connection and socialization.”
Over time, Mossman said, she became hooked. Still married, she dances without her husband, who has no interest. Mossman comes from a punk background, she cited early preferences for bands like Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, and more recently goth industrial music. She co-founded a music label, COP International, focused on industrial and darkwave artists. But even for someone coming from a rougher scene, Mossman said, tango can have sharp elbows.
“There’s a lot of arrogance and judgment,” she said. When you’re dancing on stage, “everybody’s looking at you, and some people are saying, ‘I don’t want to dance with them, they suck.’” In the beginning she said, she was reduced to tears. “I felt rejected, I felt ostracized.”
Mossman credits Coté with teaching her how to dance, and to move past her insecurities. And only dances at Milonga Malevaje at the Verdi Club because of its acceptance. “This is a very special venue,” she said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 12, 2025 to correct the name of the program that Christy Coté co-founded. It was the Verdi Club Milonga, not Milonga Malevaje. It also adds the current organizers of Milonga Malevaje, Adolfo Caszarry and Ramada Salieri.
